Joonas Hyvönen (s.1990) asuu ja työskentelee Helsingissä. Hän on osallistunut näyttelyihin Suomessa ja ulkomailla. Viimeisen vuoden Joonas on viettänyt Jan van Eyck Academien residenssissä Hollannissa. Bog Body on hänen ensimmäinen yksityisnäyttelynsä.http://joonashyvonen.com/
—
It’s weird for sure, I’d be the first to admit that. I seem to have died, but it really makes no sense. I’m sure it was just last week when I read of the so-called bog people, bodies naturally preserved in peat bogs, but never did I imagine I’d find such a bog here in Finland, even less falling into one.

Yet here I am, body turning cold, moving layer by layer deeper into the bog, but even more weird: still thinking and feeling. Some things have changed though, as the mud, soil and swamp water seep into my neurons. As the temperature in my body now mirrors the cold outside it, I start to perceive plastic bags, cigarette stumps, wreckages of cars and home appliances – and a bit further, outside my immediate perception, I somehow smell cadavers of animals, perhaps even human bodies too, and it feels as if I can share their memories of the past.

Past, present and bodies, as all things muddle up in the bog, but no story of a bog body is complete without an excavation.

Joonas Hyvönen (b.1990) lives and works in Helsinki. He’s shown works in Finland and abroad. The past year Joonas has spent in the Jan van Eyck Academie residency in the Netherlands. Bog Body is his first solo exhibition.http://joonashyvonen.com/

In the open call we are looking for artworks in which the theme is air. Air can be the subject of the work, a used material or it can appear in some other way in the work. The technique is free. The Gallery Oksasenkatu 11 wants to encourage the participants to openly experiment with different ways to approach the theme.

The space is free of charge, but the selected artists must partly oversee the exhibition.
The applicant can be an individual or a group. You can apply with an idea for an exhibition occupying the whole space, or with a single artwork.

Exhibition will take place 8th -24th of March 2019. Send the application to info@oksasenkatu.fi. Application deadline is January 11th 2019.

Niilo and Dad are going to visit Henni Kitti and Lisa Him-Jensen’s exhibition “What is Hidden What is Seen” and interpret it in their own personal way in Meta Art Work Series’ part 10. The performance is in Finnish, with a few words of English, should the need be.

The performance is free and there’s no need to reserve tickets.

Meta Art Work Series is supported by
Finnish Cultural Foundation
Helsinki City

What is Hidden What is Seen is about visibility and perception, about darkness as the absence of brightness, and about the faint lights that flicker in the dark of winter. The works are divided into two floors of Oksasenkatu 11: upstairs, drawings and texts operate in the light, and downstairs, in the dark, light is radiating from the artworks themselves. What is Hidden What is Seen features video, drawing, text and installation, and a mix of all of them.

The drawings of What is Hidden What is seen both show and hide simultaneously: they present an image of light that isn’t reflected directly to the viewer’s eye but goes through one more reflection instead; or they are simply turned away, teasing their content. Story and Sublimation depict reflections of objects in water, where the resulting image is either crystal clear or distorted, depending on the evenness of the reflecting surface.

In an installation They Shimmer Vaguely Through My Consciousness other drawings – ones that are old and forgotten; ones that are not yet finished, and new ones waiting for their turn to be seen – are rolled up into themselves and illuminated from within, letting traces of the image shine through.

The text-based works in the exhibition are about reflections, repetitions and readability, and play with these themes through their materials and techniques. In the works Statement and Ultiva, texts are printed on black or layered, translucent paper, which gradually veil and unveil the words.

In the video essay 21.12, the narrator goes searching for remnants of light in the darkest time of the year. The theme is elaborated further in a visual twin essay, which recounts the winter solstices of the past few years, and also reflects on the exhibition itself, during which one more winter solstice will take place. The video and a version of the essay are simultaneously presented at Oksasenkatu 11 and at Galleria Harmaa in Turku, and the two exhibitions are set to partially mirror each other.

What is Hidden What is Seen is the second instalment of the collaboration between Lisa Him-Jensen and Henni Kitti, and is a continuation of the themes from their first exhibition Light in the Absence of Light, at BLOKK Art Space in Bergen, 2017.

Lisa Him-Jensen (b. 1980, Stockholm) is a visual artist, and as of recent: a writer. Her first book, a collection of poetry titled Den sanne horisonten (“True Horizon”) was published in October. She works in various media, mostly drawing, painting, collage, text and (various forms of) books. Her artistic practice is situated between visual art and literature, and explores the fluid borders between reality, experience and belief, where language moves across like a thread in an effort to sew it all together.

(b.1985, Pello) is a visual artist and a writer. She makes images with a variety of media. She views her work as a series of evolutions, in which the subjects transform from work to work; the images and shapes get mirrored and reflected, their remnants get transported from one paper to another, from video to text. All her recent work is tied together by light and optical phenomena.

4.11. 2018 – 30.11.2018, Oksasenkatu 11

Opening 3rd of November 2018 17.00–19.00

Welcome!

Avoinna / Open

Ti-Pe / Tue-Fri 14-18

La-Su / Sat-Sun 12-16

Secum Aequalis Gravitatem focuses on the deconstruction of the process to produce an image through the use of intaglio printmaking techniques, and presents a series of artworks which dance within the fields of printmaking, sculpture, video and installation. The exhibition displays a varied spectrum of experiments whose inspiration originates from the artistic and graphic legacy of the artists José Ribera and Giambatista Tiepolo in a very discrete way. Besides that, they are inspired in the display of certain kind of imagery present in the Italian Baroque churches, and re-enacts a contemporary and abstract reinterpretation of the remains from the Roman ruins and temples. The show poses a refection on the origins of an image, not always literally, as it mostly remains invisible or hard to reach. Just as if a sacrifice had taken place, a fayed skin is used to dig into the power of the matrix, the plate which originated it.

The title in latin, whose translation to English would be “Entailing Equal Seriousness” is the context for the solo show of the Spanish artist Inma Herrera. The exhibition brings about subtle suggestions of violence, a quiet conversation between the looking eye and executing hand, and the presence of a stripped image accompanied by the reflections of the metallic copper, propose the personal reading of the artist’s stay in Rome, and conforms part of the research and production she developed in this city during a nine-month residency at the Spanish Academy in Rome between 2017/2018.

Inma Herrera (1986, Madrid) studied Fine Arts and Art Creation and Research (MA) at UCM, Madrid. She was trained as Print Media Specialist at the Spanish Royal Mint, Madrid. Recently she finished her MFA studies in Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki. She works on practice-based projects which examine the fragility and genesis of an image, the physical dimension of labor, and the revival of the craftsmanship in defiance of the ‘relative dematerialization’ of the body in the era of technology and virtuality.

This project has been possible with the support of Suomen Taideyhdistys, and MAEC-AECID, ES. The show is curated by P14, with the special support and assistance of Ulla-Maija Pitkänen.

I met with Inma in Venice a year ago. She had just arrived to spend her 9 month residency at the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome and was visiting Venice to study the Museo Correr archives of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Also José de Ribera was a reason for Herrera to spend time in Italy because both Tiepolo and Ribera had made their lifework in Italy and in Spain. Herrera was there to find out their ways of seeing, thinking and touching.

When one sees Herrera’s works, the surface strikes first. Surface of copper, surface of skin made out of ink and silicone. Copper which illuminates, deep, black etching skin that swallows the light. One reaches immediately ones hands towards these materials. Take me there, they shout. But where, one asks? The journey of investigating Herrera’s works requires patience. What one sees, are the details, which give the clues to keep on going. That’s why it’s necessary to think while seeing.

The way one thinks, helps. With focused mind and giving the time. After seeing, or while doing it, one thinks. What are these hints one sees? To focus. To lift your gaze towards the line where the wall and the ceiling meet each other. There might be a next clue. Or then not. Breathing into the works. Thinking what you see. To think.

Touching the invisible. To let the mind touch. It shouts your name. Like crazy. But you don’t touch because it wouldn’t change a thing. You can think how the material would feel in your fingers. How the soft, thick blackness would roll over you. Taking you under its arms. Ribera’s works are known for their cruelty themes. He lived in a time when strappado was one of the torture methods. To take the skin off. As the tortures do in a painting The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, 1644.

To leave your fingerprints. Smash the surface. Drying, etched surface. Shiny under, unknown handle. To guide one forward, into the darkness or to the light. The light which is illuminating around you. Let it touch your mind. Step. Think.

Inma Herrera discovered the light of Italy. She found the stone carved altars in Roman Catholic Churches and the eye drawn by Ribera. Think of Ribera’s The Sense of Touch, 1632. Eyes closed the blind man is touching the head of an statue. The closed eyes give him the information needed. To see, to think, to touch.

Herrera’s exhibition sums up the working period which she started in Rome in 2017.

The world can be seen through every painting. Light, colour, shape, movement. Object and background. If a painting wasn’t transparent like this, or translucent at the least, it would be pitch-black and invisible to the eye.

The gaze never stops. Ceaselessly it gropes the world, shaping the concepts of seeing along the way. The gaze organizes and classifies the world according to the laws of the image.

A painting may try to break this order, it may sort the world into wrong piles, tongue-in-cheek. Painting may hide, creeping under one of those piles. However, to escape the jurisdiction of the eye is futile. One may break the law of the image, but one cannot evade the judgement.

Thus, every painting is a prisoner of the eye; a prisoner of the world the eye is accustomed to watch.

A painting is a representation imposed. That is what a painter must settle for.

Downstairs / Schakir

Sketches of the transparency of light (and mind).

The quintessential quality of light is transparency, both as a vehicle of seeing and technology of expression. This attribute creates an exceptional dimension for light as an instrument of expression. Usually, light is not observed.

Even though objects are perceived almost unchanged irrespective of prevailing light, changes in lighting also change perception and add diverse layers of information to it. The use of artificial light creates layers of significance. In this sense lighting design is a kind of a primitive version of augmented reality. Relation to transparency and rendering something opaque is pivotal for expressing with light. The art of light is the ability to use transparency as a tool of expression in a way that the amount of transparency is the variable, one could claim.

Light locates the attention completely outside of itself. For light to function as meaningful content of art, it needs to be made a third factor in the relation of subject and object: subject – light – object.

The works in the exhibition are sketches and one suggestion for changing the light exclusive gaze into a light including one. The objects’ relation to light is essential in the works, not the individual objects.

MARJA SALEVA: A ROOM WITH COZY MEMORIES, CREEPY CALCULATIONS FOR THE FUTURE AND SOME PIZZA

I have stayed in this room for a long time. I have built walls and marked places for doors and windows, windows. In this context one would think that…At a certain age one should. I look at the immobile images in front of me, until. I have imagined it all. I make this a place where I can store the timelines and it.

The images are haunted by forms of incidents that never happened, the interrupted dreams tell their truths. Despite what the forecast predicted the weather is turning windy, the incidents clash violently with each other and begin to multiply in an uncontrollable way. The water transforms into pixels. No one knows why or how. (According to the study published in the spring of 2015 by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, the presentage of childless, unmarried women within the EU is proportionally biggest in Finland.) At some point in the evening I decide to remov everything unnecessary and irrelevant from the image so that no one and nothing in this room represents itself – only me. The image turns dark, the house turns lighter. In the night the wind asks – what time is it, what?

A Room With (CMCCFTFASP) is built of photographs and magazines printed on variety of materials. It’s the first solo show of Ms. Saleva.

Marja Saleva (1975) is a Helsinki based visual artist. She mainly works with photographs, often combining them with texts. The themes of her work deal with everyday life, intimacy, intuivity, experimentality and large masses of picture material. In her work, Saleva has addressed living alone, among others in a series (He is so obsessed with me), and published a photo book (2013) and an online artwork (2017) about the series.

***

Marja Salevan näyttelyä on tukenut / The exhibition of Marja Saleva has been supported by:
Greta ja William Lehtisen säätiö

A sheet. A pillow. Nose. Glasses. A t-shirt. Floor. A door handle. A door handle. A water tab. Water. A towel.
Eyes. Face. A water tab. Water. Soap. Water. A towel. A water tab. Soap. Water. A water tab. A towel. A shower handle. Water. A shampoo bottle. Water. A conditioner bottle. Water. A towel. Lotion.
(Detail from Morning -sound work, Nelli Tanner, 2018)

Home and self-portraits are on close look in videos, drawings and sound works by Nelli Tanner and Laura Ukkonen. The artists’ observations on their everyday life and artistic processes reflect on past fine artists’ works – Elin Danielson-Gambogi (1861-1919) ja Ellen Thesleff (1869-1964) – whose works depict self-portraits, mother-child images and home artifacts. How is home, taking care of children and artistic work combined? It is presence that is simultaneously being too close and too far.

The artists find Ellen and Elin inspiring in their courage, concentration and travelling in time when women usually stayed home. They took their own space and chose art as a profession. They were driven by a passion to make better, more touching and more beautiful art. Tanner and Ukkonen confront them as colleagues and as women they ponder similar things – updated to contemporary society.

TWO SIGNATURES is the artists’ first exhibition as a work group. It’s based on conversations and drawings sent to each other. Ukkonen works in Helsinki and Tanner in Imatra. The dialogue has developed in phone calls, emails, face to face talks and in skype during the past year. The exhibition space is an experimentation where their art works meet for the first time.

Nelli Tanner (1976) is a visual artist from Imatra who works with jewellery art, installations and public art works.
Tanner has graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie (BA) in 2003 and from Saimaa University of Applied Sciences (Master of Culture and Arts) in 2012. Tanner’s works are in collections of CODA museum, Apeldoorn (NL) and Designmuseum (FIN). The work is based on the relationships with our everyday life objects and broken home artifacts. Tanner also depicts our habits with objects by making videos.
Working of the artist has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Laura Ukkonen (1977) is a visual artist based in Helsinki working with drawings, writing and moving image. She completed her MA in Fine Arts at Aalto University in 2012. Her studies also consist of art history and gender studies in University of Turku (BA) and on-going studies in art education at Aalto University. Ukkonen’s works are landscapes, portraits and interiors based in everyday life documentations reflecting art history and gender studies. Can contemporary emotions be understood in relation to the past?